Friday, June 6, 2014

How Public Libraries Are Solving America's Reading Problem - Forbes

How Public
Libraries Are Solving America's Reading Problem

We have a reading problem in the United States.
It’s not that people aren’t reading: in fact the Pew Research Centerreportsthat 76% of adults have read a book in the past year. Even kids are
reading – andsome
studiessuggest that millennials are more likely to read literature than previous generations. The problem is choice. Readers are drowning
in books.

Too Many Books, Not Enough Time

11,022 books were published in 1950. That number
may sound quaint today, but it’s still a large number. Read one book a
week for sixty years, and you’ll still leave two-thirds of those titles
untouched. Consider then, the jaw-dropping 978,701 titlesBowkertold me were published or
self-published in 2012. There’s some double counting in that number
(print and eBook copies of the same title have separate ISBNs) but it is
terrifying, nonetheless.

The influence of bookstores has changed appreciably since
Bordersbankruptcy:
just 20% of frequent readers say they found their last book from a bookstore in
2012, down dramatically from 32% in 2010 according to Peter Hildick-Smith at
theCodex Group. (Contrary to popular
belief, bookstores are not disappearing en masse. Publisher’s Weekly reports
12,703 bookstores in 2013 versuscensus datacounting
12,751 bookstores and news dealers in 2002. )

Online retailers like Amazon have not filled this
gap. Just 7% of readers found their last book at an online retailer: a
number that has barely budged in the last three years.

Meanwhile, At The Library

Libraries managed tightening budgets successfully through
the last decade. Americans made 5.3 visits per person to public libraries in
2010 according to theInstitute of
Museum and Library Services. This continued a ten-year trend that saw
library visits increase by over twenty percent. Libraries also lent 2.46
billion materials in the same year: more than 8 lends for every American.
Finally, libraries increased in relevance as centers for book discovery.
Last year, 2.9% of frequent readers said they’d discovered their last book at a
library, a big jump from 1.8% in 2010 (data also from the Codex Group).

According to thePew
Research Center, libraries remain themost
trustedinstitution in the United States, ahead of the military, small
businesses, the police or religious institutions. A staggering 91% of
Americans say that libraries are important to their community.

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Merchandising
Books in Colorado

In Adams County, Colorado theRangeview Library Districthad the good fortune (in 2006) to have their community support a levy that
provided a significant funding boost to their library system. Instead of
just getting new carpet and furniture and adding a branch or two, however,
library director Pam Sandlian Smith embarked on a dramatic program that
rethought the fundamental role of the library.

Part of what the renamedAnythinklibraries did was to
implement visual merchandising standards right out of retailing 101. They
also abandoned the Dewey Decimal System, which allowed them to group books
together in more consumer friendly ways (pregnancy, childbirth and baby names all
are in different ranges of the Dewey universe, for example). Some of the
basic techniques that Anythink has included in theirvisual
merchandising guideincluded standard retail practices like fronting up,
facing out and filling up.

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Lessons
from The Librarium

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, library directorGary Shafferfaced a
dilemma over the upcoming closing of the Central Library for two years.
As a library system, the Tulsa City-County library serves both urban Tulsa
(which is in the midst of arevival)
as well as the suburbs. The Central Library was an important urban
resource and two years was too long for the city to do without a library.

The solution, as it turned out, was in the produce
aisle. An abandoned grocery store, specifically, which was quickly
renovated and turned into a space called theLibrarium. READ MORE !